Without guns, America would be England still

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So here's an interesting take on guns. Everybody is always saying guns are bad and should be banned. Well according to the founding fathers, gun ownership should be a CORE RIGHT of all Americans.

I think people in America quickly forget that without guns we would be part of England still.

The founding fathers understood this more than anybody and the reason they wanted citizens to have the RIGHT to own guns is because they didn't know what the future held for America.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The founding fathers didn't want to create a society in which the government had more power than the collective power of the people. This is why they believed that standard issue military and militia weapons should be available to common citizens.

Don't think guns hadn't been used to kill innocent people when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. They knew full well that guns could be used for bad purposes. They also felt it was such an important RIGHT that they would put it as the 2nd amendment, 2nd to only free speech. I've also heard that it was originally planned to be the 1st amendment, that's how important this RIGHT was to the founding fathers. They wanted gun ownership to be a core right of all Americans for generations to come.

I'm sure pro2A can correct any inaccuracies in this post or add some more details.

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Lol, this is not an anti-England thread. It just so happens that the England at the time of the Revolutionary war happened to be oppressive. That shouldn't offend any current people living in England, it's not THEIR fault after all.

By the same logic, then, England would never have been a threat to our freedom if they hadn't had guns themselves. The argument equating guns to salvation is therefore a weak one at best.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The founding fathers didn't want to create a society in which the government had more power than the collective power of the people. This is why they believed that standard issue military and militia weapons should be available to common citizens.

That's an absolute fallacy. The "Government" referenced in the Declaration is England, and England alone. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution expressly forbids such treason against the United States as you suggest the Fathers deliberately left open the door to, and the death penalty for that highest of offenses is codified in federal law. To have sanctioned the armed overthrow of our own government would have been a foolhardy proposition indeed, especially in a day when there as many Loyalists living on our soil as there were American Patriots!

Basic American history teaches us that things were very different in the late 18th Century from the way they are today. The Continental Army was woefully undermanned, with pay being notoriously spotty and time away from home lives impossible for most family heads to sacrifice. It was imperative for the safety of the Nation that irregular militias such as those who were integral in driving out the British in the Revolution be allowed to exist. That era has long since passed; our military proper is now second to none in the world. The notion that the people should be armed in order to potentially effect a domestic insurrection like the South did in the Civil War holds no Constitutional water whatsoever.

Don't think guns hadn't been used to kill innocent people when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. They knew full well that guns could be used for bad purposes.

The framers of the Constitution could not see into the future and know how change would develop: that our armed forces would become the mightiest in al of history; that guns would evolve into multi-shot, automatic and deadly efficient killing machines favored by illegal gangs across the land; that numerous presidents would be shot dead, or shot, or shot at, by American citizens; or that more deaths would result from accidental shootings than from protection of life and property.

What they did understand was that times would continue to change. This is why, in their wisdom, they allowed for our perpetual system of amendments whereby one could even supersede another, as we saw with Prohibition and its repeal. I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble, and I surely don't want my sweet rifle taken from me, but the idea that the Second Amendment is somehow sacrosanct and Constitutionally immutable is ipso facto proven utterly false.

Hell, It's about time!

So here's an interesting take on guns. Everybody is always saying guns are bad and should be banned. Well according to the founding fathers, gun ownership should be a CORE RIGHT of all Americans.

I think people in America quickly forget that without guns we would be part of England still.

The founding fathers understood this more than anybody and the reason they wanted citizens to have the RIGHT to own guns is because they didn't know what the future held for America.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:

The founding fathers didn't want to create a society in which the government had more power than the collective power of the people. This is why they believed that standard issue military and militia weapons should be available to common citizens.

Don't think guns hadn't been used to kill innocent people when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. They knew full well that guns could be used for bad purposes. They also felt it was such an important RIGHT that they would put it as the 2nd amendment, 2nd to only free speech. I've also heard that it was originally planned to be the 1st amendment, that's how important this RIGHT was to the founding fathers. They wanted gun ownership to be a core right of all Americans for generations to come.

I'm sure pro2A can correct any inaccuracies in this post or add some more details.

After reading the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, this is pretty accurate Hybrix. You might want to add one thing tho. George Mason said it best, "that the militia is the whole of the people, the armed citizenry". It takes a lot of liberal lawyers and a bunch of time to determine that somehow this is some "collective" right. It's sad that we had to have a Supreme Court ruling to prove its an individual right. I mean its perfectly clear "The right of the PEOPLE"...

That's an absolute fallacy. The "Government" referenced in the Declaration is England, and England alone. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution expressly forbids such treason against the United States as you suggest the Fathers deliberately left open the door to, and the death penalty for that highest of offenses is codified in federal law. To have sanctioned the armed overthrow of our own government would have been a foolhardy proposition indeed, especially in a day when there as many Loyalists living on our soil as there were American Patriots!

I'm not saying we SHOULD, but your argument doesn't hold much water, considering that every last founding father was a traitor to England and would have been executed if they had lost the Revolutionary War. England had laws for dealing with traitors as well. That didn't stop the US from getting independence.

The framers of the Constitution could not see into the future and know how change would develop: that our armed forces would become the mightiest in al of history; that guns would evolve into multi-shot, automatic and deadly efficient killing machines favored by illegal gangs across the land; that numerous presidents would be shot dead, or shot, or shot at, by American citizens; or that more deaths would result from accidental shootings than from protection of life and property.

What they did understand was that times would continue to change. This is why, in their wisdom, they allowed for our perpetual system of amendments whereby one could even supersede another, as we saw with Prohibition and its repeal. I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble, and I surely don't want my sweet rifle taken from me, but the idea that the Second Amendment is somehow sacrosanct and Constitutionally immutable is ipso facto proven utterly false.

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an out right ban, picking up every one of them... Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here."